Nocturne
by Empatheia
Summary: Orihime, Ishida. How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back. Orihime comes home, only to find that she hasn't.


**A/N: **Written for the February round of Bleach flashfics on LiveJournal. A definite stylistic departure for me.

Warning: contains character death by extremely questionable means. Pretends to be depressing but isn't really.

Enjoy!

**xxxxx**

_**Nocturne**_

**xxxxx**

_When the rain falls_

_I watch the window_

_Golden dreams_

_Wash down the willow_

_Where are my Mardi Gras memories?_

_Under silver seas._

_Long cold nights_

_Change my reflection_

_Unsung songs_

_Show my direction_

_Where are my make believe victories?_

_Under silver seas_

_Once I lived_

_You might remember _

_Born in May_

_Died in September_

_Where are my carousel fantasies?_

_Under silver seas._

_Billy Joel, unpublished lyrics for 'Nocturne'_

At her feet he knelt and trembled, his bleeding, shaking hands offered up to her gentle fingers.

"Shun'ou. Ayame," she whispered. The smell of blood, the feel of it sliding wet and warm over her palms, no longer made her sick. She had seen far too much of it in the last interminable weeks of her un-life. Now she was immune to this particular horror.

The quiet tangerine glow spread over him, enveloped him in its healing embrace. Shun'ou and Ayame smiled at each other across the un-shield, then closed their eyes.

Ishida Uryuu gave an audible gasp of relief as the ragged tearing wounds in his chest, back, and arms closed silently. The flow of blood over her hands slowed, then stopped entirely. She closed her fingers around his and tried her very hardest not to cry.

xxxxx

The afternoon sun was warm where it spilled across her desk, the last grasping touch of summer before November dissolved into rain and winter.

Orihime stared at her hands. In this light they nearly glowed, bright with life and heat. She remembered those, distantly, like one remembers holidays from childhood-- hazily, nostalgically. Now she was cold, always, and used to it.

Ishida had taken her out of Hueco Mundo, carried her the last mile to the gate and stumbled through with her half-conscious and wondering in his arms.

He had taken the clothing they had dressed her in away and burned it, made new ones for her from scratch. He had run her a bath and let her sit in it for hours, methodically scrubbing away the smell of white stone and sand and blood and death. He had cooked for her, real food that sat reassuringly in her stomach and did not taste of wind and nothing on her tongue.

Still she felt tainted. Still she felt empty. Still she felt endlessly, helplessly cold.

Ishida had taken her from Hueco Mundo, but he could not take Hueco Mundo from her. It changed a person, to live in the land of the mindless, miserable dead. Most people would have simply faded away upon return to the world of the living, become a grey shadow at the corner of sight.

Orihime had always been brighter and more beautiful, more _alive_, than most people, and so she did not fade. Even so she was out of sync with the living world, like a sliding door shifted partially off its tracks, still able to move and function but painful and awkward in doing so. She remembered how to smile, how to laugh, how to make easy conversation about the weather and the latest gossip. She still had no sense of what foods belonged together, and still knew how to giggle and grin charmingly when teased about it. Her hair was still vivaciously red.

She remembered how to be everything she'd once been, but to those who had known her before, she felt _wrong_.

Ishida told her so. He told her everything he thought she might want to know about herself that she couldn't see, and everything about the world that she was no longer seeing or saw differently.

_You used to draw_, he told her. _Crazy things. Yourself as a robot. Wars and lasers and mechanical flowers. Remember?_

Orihime did remember. Wonderwyce had drawn with her, painting on the walls of her room with chalky, dull fingerpaints he'd found god-knows-where. He'd never spoken to her, only communicated through his art, and they had understood each other. Wonderwyce had drawn things resembling happiness as though he knew what that was supposed to look like. It had been the only thing that kept her sane there, but now that she was back, drawing made her remember how close madness had come. She didn't draw anymore.

_Would you like to come over and watch this movie with me? You told me once it was one of your favourites._

She remembered that too. The movie was ridiculous, a fantastic made-up love story where the hero always knew the right thing to say and the heroine always believed him. She gave Ishida a small bitter smile and turned him down without explanation (_no, thank you, so kind of you to ask_). Then she went home alone and stared at her wall-- white, unblemished, freshly-painted-- until night fell and she couldn't bear to look at it anymore because of what it now resembled. She didn't watch movies anymore. They depended on the suspension of disbelief in order to entertain, and now Orihime knew better.

There were many things Orihime no longer did.

Look at the moon. Walk outside after dark. Sleep.

Think about Kurosaki-kun and the others, living their afterlives somewhere other than where she was. They had died to save her. Now they lived again to protect her. She had no idea where she would find the strength to look in their eyes and not be crushed by the weight of sacrifice she saw there, or let her eyes break away from their faces to scan their arms and clavicles for the scars she knew should be there. She missed them, would loved to see them, but she was terrified beyond words of actually standing before them again. They would be kind, happy to see her, and she would break.

Ishida was smart enough never to suggest it. Tatsuki would have tried, but Tatsuki was in America on a transfer program. Kurosaki-kun's father had left her a letter offering to send her over whenever she liked. She hadn't answered it, and pretended not to be home when Kurosaki-kun's sisters came knocking. She couldn't face them, knowing their brother died for her. Except for Ishida's occasional presence Orihime was utterly alone.

Whenever he saw an opportunity, he invited her over for dinner, made her clothing, talked awkwardly about nothing in particular, and otherwise did his best to distract her from her memories. He was a surpassingly kind person despite all his aloof sharp edges. Orihime appreciated it, loved him a little for it.

He seemed to have made it his mission to help her relearn herself, a little bit each day. She wondered if he missed the old her. Sometimes she also wondered if he had been a little in love with that her. Hueco Mundo was a long way to go even for a Quincy, and he had fought desperately enough to save her that he had survived when no one else had. He still fought desperately to save her even now. There had to be more to it than simple pride and decency.

Orihime had been in love once, but she had never seen anyone else in love, and wasn't sure how to recognize it in another person. The best she could think of to go off of was the mad light in Chizuru's eyes, and Orihime knew enough to know that most people in love did not look like that.

Like so many other things about the world she'd used to belong to, it was a mystery.

She was getting accustomed to not understanding things. Sometimes it made her miss Hueco Mundo. It was hell, yes, but the rules were very simple. Speak when spoken to, and then humbly as a servant. Fulfill Aizen's wishes the moment he voices them, and if he wishes nothing fulfill those of his underlings. Keep your eyes downcast. Do not complain. Eat what is given to you. Sleep when you are permitted to. Above all else, do not try to escape. Simple rules, easy to follow. She had learned to expect the worst of every moment and was therefore never surprised by anything anymore.

It was a kind of peace. Sometimes she missed it. A predictable hell seemed to her less awful than this spontaneous, confusing life she'd returned to.

Orihime wondered now, staring at her silently blank white wall in the cool blue evening, if she could use the Shun Shun Rik'ka to reject her own presence in this world, catapult her back to where things were awful but at least made sense. She would never do it. But she was curious to know if she _could._

"Tsubaki," she whispered.

He whirled into existence above her palm, obnoxious and already irritated. "What?"

She asked him. He stared at her, then flew up to her face and jabbed her smartly in the eye. She clapped a hand over it as it watered and made a pained face, but said no word of reproach. He returned to her palm and glared at her blackly.

"First, I'm the wrong person to ask about that. You ought to ask those fluttering twits Shun'ou and Ayame, they'd know better. Secondly, you're an idiot."

"I know," she said calmly, accepting. "I just wondered." She closed her palm and Tsubaki vanished, returning to her crystal hairclips to wait for her to need him again. She thought about following his advice and calling Shun'ou and Ayame, but thought better of it. She hadn't really wanted to know the answer anyway. Knowing would bring her one step closer to doing, and she didn't want to take that risk.

Night fell and the wall turned into a pale tapestry of shadows. A shudder ran through her and she turned away. She knew she ought to sleep, but in sleep there was dreams and in dreams there was horror, and Orihime was nothing if not tired of being afraid.

She stayed awake until morning, curled under her embroidered covers, trying not to notice how well she could see in the dark now.

xxxxx

For a long moment after she opened the door, black-eyed with exhaustion, she could not find it within herself to react at all.

She considered closing the door between herself and the visitors, keeping them out until she knew what to say. She considered bursting in tears and falling to her knees. For a brief moment, she considered pretending not to remember them and being stranger-polite.

In the end she did none of these. Kurosaki-kun didn't give her a chance to. He took one look at her, saw whatever it was she'd spent hours in the mirror searching for after Ishida had told her about herself, and pulled her into a crushing embrace.

Orihime considered breaking.

Rukia pulled Ichigo off of her and then replaced his brawny arms with her own thinner, paler ones, her fingers on Orihime's spine making grand reunion speeches. Sado-kun was there as well, standing silent and somber off to the left, and Renji-san to the right, grinning like a sunburnt jackal.

_How?_ she wanted to ask, and then, more importantly, _Why?_ But her voice would not cooperate. She gasped like a fish trying to find nourishment in empty, harsh air, trembled and shook in their arms. It was a terrible thing, she reflected, for people who have died for you to be able to come back and smile in your face, real and breathing and unaccusing. It made the guilt unbearable.

"Ishida sent us to fetch you," Rukia said, her smile clean and bright as snow. "He's cooking up some sort of feast, to celebrate. We would have come here first but we ran into him on the way."

"Sorry we couldn't come earlier. We wanted to wait until all of us could come, so we had to wait until Chad and I had a break from school," Ichigo explained.

Chad nodded. "The Academy holds long hours."

"I dunno 'bout you guys, but I'm freakin' starving," Renji interrupted, pretending impatience though his eyes sparkled. "Could we get a move on?"

The four of them flanked Orihime, dragging her out of her apartment and down the darkening streets, their cheery voices keeping the shadows at bay. They talked about Soul Society's war muster, the invasion plans, about Shunsui finally winning Nanao's heart (as if he hadn't had it already), how badly Ichigo and Chad were creaming their classmates and in which subjects, how much the food in Soul Society sucked compared to Ishida's cooking, about everything and nothing all at the same time. Orihime walked silently between them and soaked it in, smiling a little because she loved the sound of their voices.

They weren't angry with her. She'd known they wouldn't be, which made it almost harder because it atonement is difficult without punishment. She understood why they weren't. If it had been Kurosaki-kun in her shoes and she had died trying to rescue him, she wouldn't have blamed him for it. She would have died without a thought for any one of them, and never spoken a single word of accusation. She would much rather have been in those shoes than these ones.

Almost all of the people in the world whom Inoue Orihime loved walked beside her, and she felt guilty all over again for not being happy about it.

She was very, very familiar with guilt. Guilt over her brother's death, his subsequent half-life as a hollow thing of claws and fury, still sat square in the middle of her chest. Immoveable. Guilt over how little she'd been able to do in Soul Society during Rukia's rescue sat right next to it. The pain she'd caused Tatsuki by leaving without a word was a grace note to top all of it off. She carried guilt like most people carried their heads-- it was as intrinsic a part of her as her russet hair or her infamous chest.

The difference was, all those times before she had simply lived with it, done her best to make it up to those involved. She had forced herself to keep living despite the weight. This time she had given up and let it swallow her. Worst of all, she hadn't even noticed until now.

She saw her current self reflected in their eyes and was, for the first time, truly astonished at how much she'd changed. Where was the bumbling, irrepressible optimism she prided herself on? Where were her real smiles, the ones that cheered people up for five blocks in every direction? Where was she? Where had she gone? Who was this they were looking at who had her face but not her heart?

Her feet continued to move, though she no longer noticed, too wrapped up in this sudden horrible insight.

They reached Ishida's house, climbed the seventeen steps to his door, and went inside when he opened it for them. His house was cool and austere, decorated unsurprisingly in white and blue with steel and glass trappings, but somehow it felt safe and warm to Orihime.

The rich smells of roasted fish and pickled vegetables wafted out to them from the kitchen behind Ishida. She suddenly realized she was starving. When was the last time she'd eaten? Toast and canned fish, yesterday afternoon. No wonder. She followed the others to the table, thanked Uryuu-kun with a smile, and tucked in with genuine pleasure. Good food, good company-- she had heard somewhere once that nothing more was needed for happiness.

Orihime was doubtful, but it sounded lovely, so she decided to believe it. Atrophied muscles in her chest stirred painfully. She felt tears in her eyes, but she was glad for them, because they meant she was really feeling. What did happiness taste like? How had it sounded? She forced herself to remember, piece by echo by glimmer, until she felt a smile spreading on her face without her having to paint it there. Ah, yes. This was it, this expansiveness under her ribcage, the vibrant beating of her heart, the feeling in the back of her throat like she wanted to sing but didn't know what. Happiness. Joy. How had she ever forgotten?

Reveling in her recovered smile, Orihime made conversation with these people whom she loved. She told them about school, though not about the apathy she'd felt towards it these past months. She told them about her eccentric neighbours (they were girls, two of them, they had underwear for each day of the week and dried them on a line across their public balcony, they loved to blast KAT-TUN and sing along badly, they occasionally blew things up in their kitchen but somehow managed not to cause any lasting damage), about her plans for the future (these she made up, she'd forgotten them if she'd ever had any), about the butterfly cocoon she'd discovered under her eavestrough. She asked them endless questions about their own lives and was delighted to find that she cared about their answers.

By the time the visitors filed out, glumly awaiting the gate which would return them to Soul Society, Orihime was very nearly her old self again. Or rather, more correctly, an entirely new person, deeper and more aware of sadness and hopelessness than before, but capable again of all her old enthusiasm and ebullience.

"Uryuu-kun," she said, turning to him and smiling. "Thank you for dinner. It was wonderful."

He flushed and adjusted his glasses to avoid looking at her. "I'm glad."

It was a simple exchange, one repeated hundreds of thousands of times between friends and acquaintances since time immemorial, but this time it was more than that. She knew with perfect certainty that he realized this as well as she did.

Ishida walked her home. Orihime went to bed and fell instantly asleep.

She dreamed of arms around her, sometimes uncertain and shy and sometimes powerful and utterly self-confident. Somehow she knew they were the same arms. Everything she saw was white, cold but somehow comforting. She dreamed of flying light which was beautiful but also lethal.

Orihime dreamed of love and forgot everything on waking.

xxxxx

She had hoped that remembering happiness would let her enjoy school again.

It didn't. Rather, it seemed twice as pointless as it had before to go through all these routines, jump these hoops, memorize things she knew she would never use. At the end of the year they would give her a piece of paper and ask her to fill it out. It would ask her what her plans were for the years after graduation. What did she want to do? What career path would she choose to follow?

Orihime only had one dream for the future, and there was no way she could write it down for the teachers to stare at and worry over. _I want to die and become a healer. I want to be a member of the Fourth Squadron under Unohana Retsu and save people's lives with my hands and my sword and my hair barrettes. I want to die._

She wondered if when the time came she would be motivated enough to lie convincingly, or whether she would just write something cryptic and silly where her future should be and hand it in with a secret smile. Somehow the thought of facing that made her unspeakably exhausted.

Perhaps she should become a nurse. She would be good at that... but somehow, the thought of spending a lifetime trying her hardest to prevent people from going to Soul Society and being reborn seemed almost pointless. She felt she would be far more useful keeping shinigami alive so they could save Hollows and keep the darkness at bay.

Everything she'd learned about right and wrong so far in her life said that killing herself in order to move on to the afterlife was wrong, wrong, the wrongest thing there was aside from murdering someone else, but everyone didn't know what she did about what came after. It was like traveling to another country to her-- going to Vienna to study music, to America or India to study science, to Spain to study dance.

"Tsubaki," she murmured absently, opening her palm to catch him as he whirled to life.

"Now what?" he snapped.

"I want to die."

He regarded her for a long instant, eyes unreadable above his bandanna, arms crossed over his tiny chest. "What do you want to do that for?" he asked finally, sounding oddly resigned.

"Most of my friends are there already. The others will get there eventually. I think I could be useful there. I love life, all the growing things and animals and oceans and not knowing what's going to happen next, but none of it's nearly as exciting now that I know that what comes after is hardly worse. I haven't seen all of Soul Society yet. Do you think it has oceans?"

"Just the one," Tsubaki replied, then stopped himself. "I mean. Dying is terrible idea. I don't recommend it to anyone."

"Will anything happen to you if I die?" she asked, curious.

He grumbled. "Well, not really. We might actually get stronger once freed from your physical body. But that doesn't mean I approve." Tsubaki paced the length of her palm, back arched defensively like a cat. He was so small, so fragile, and yet his power and confidence were easily the match of someone a thousand times his size. He knew his place in the world and didn't doubt it. Ever.

"Okay. Thanks, Tsubaki."

He squawked in protest as he vanished between her fingers.

What to do? Where to go? Orihime didn't know. All she knew was that she was tired and she missed her friends.

Making up her mind on a smaller matter, she bundled up and walked to Ishida's house.

It was late, he was dressed for sleep in flannel pyjamas, but he opened the door for her when she knocked. "Inoue-san," he said, flushing rather endearingly. "Is something wrong?"

She pursed her lips and walked past him into his white-and-steel living room. It curved around her familiarly. A flash of deja vu assaulted her and she pressed fingers to her chest curiously. Where had she felt this before? What happened next? She knew, somehow, but couldn't remember because it hadn't happened yet. Or something. She was confused, but she remembered her question well enough. The reason she'd come here.

"Uryuu-kun," she said, folding her coat and laying it neatly on the coffee table, "do you ever want to die?"

"What?" he asked her, appropriately startled as any self-respecting mortal should be. "What do you mean?"

Orihime realized she was wearing a shirt he'd made for her, red with a bold stripe of white down the side and a flattering but modest squarish neckline. She smoothed her hands over the synthetic fabric and smiled brilliantly, knowing it would throw him off guard. People saw her as silly, sweet but a bit dense. Even when they saw her name in the top five exam scores time after time they always forgot how terribly clever she was. Ishida was no exception. "I was thinking about my plans for the future," she told him perfectly truthfully. There was no need to lie about any of this. Taking a deep breath, she explained her thoughts of late to him in rambling detail. When she was finished, she looked at him expectantly as though he should have all the answers. She knew he didn't, but she also it pleased him to be looked at like that.

"To tell the truth," he said, adjusting his glasses and turning his body so he presented only his profile. It was a habit of his when he was nervous. "I'll admit I've considered it a few times myself. I don't know what place Quincies might have in Soul Society, but I've wondered if I wouldn't be more useful fighting Hollows in spirit form. I'm certainly more powerful in Soul Society than I am here."

"Why haven't you gone already?" she asked him. He was smarter even that she was, and if he hadn't done it, he must have a decent argument against it, she reasoned. She wanted to know what it was.

To her surprise, he blushed bright red and turned even further so all she could really see was his back and the flash of light-reflection from the inside of his left spectacle-lens. "I, er, well. Don't you know?" he muttered weakly, fidgeting fit to wear a hole through the edge of his shirt where he fiddled with it. It was white, with a blue collar.

"No," she said honestly. "Tell me?"

He visibly forced himself to turn back and face her. "Well, because of you," he said, and turned an even deeper shade of red.

Well, this was unexpected. Or not. She'd wondered before. Now she knew. She bit her lip and tried to decide how she felt about it. Unbidden, a hazy flash of memory crossed her mind, of dreams she barely recalled. Ah. So that's who those arms had belonged to. She hugged herself unconsciously and tried to cope calmly with the facts that Ishida Uryuu was quite in love with her, that somewhere within herself she loved him back, and more so the fact that she hadn't even had the brains to figure it out earlier. She felt the fabric of the shirt he'd made her beneath her fingers, felt the care and love that had gone into it, and suddenly felt very small and vulnerable. "Do you love me?" she asked, so quietly she wasn't sure he'd even be able to hear her. She knew the answer. She just wanted to hear him say it out loud so there could be no misunderstanding.

The blush faded from his cheeks. His other side, the side that allowed him to say devastating things to enemies he faced and that had utter confidence in his own fighting abilities, was emerging. This side of him made her weak in the knees, made her want to fall at his feet and stroke his thighs and fawn, stand behind him and let him protect her. She loved his socially inept, blushing side too, it made her feel warm and comfortable, but this...

"Well, yes," he answered. "Of course. You really didn't know?"

She shook her head, but wondered even as she did so if that was really true. Hadn't she known? Hadn't her wonderings only been wonderings because she'd been too modest to believe he loved her, just in case she'd been wrong? She had known.

In three steps she crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him, laying her head on his shoulder and promising herself a good long think about this as soon as she got home. For now, though, it felt right to let him know that he wasn't just throwing candles into the dark with her. She knew, she saw, and sometimes she dreamed of his arms around her.

He tentatively touched her shoulders, her back, and when she made no sounds of protest he encircled her completely and exhaled into her hair.

"I don't know what to do," she confessed. "What should I do? Where should I go?"

"I don't know," he answered, honestly.

The weight and power of her love for him suddenly slammed into her ribcage from the inside, a sentient thing trying to claw its way out. How had she avoided this knowledge? How had she missed this when it was so painfully obvious? He was so honest with her, though there were so many things about his life that he'd learned to hide. From childhood he'd been taught to be mysterious, unreadable, blank, but to her he spoke the truth.

"Okay," she said, and then she kissed him because she couldn't _not._

She didn't really know what she was doing, but then, neither did he. Their noses bumped momentarily before they found an angle that worked better. Orihime sighed into his mouth and melted into him. They were children, inexperienced and naive, but they knew what love was and this was it.

He had followed her far past the ends of the earth. She abruptly remembered the feel of his blood dribbling through her fingers as he knelt at her feet, half-dead but unwavering in his determination to save her. It was easy to forget in the normal, bland passage of school days that this was a person who could kill, and did so when necessary. He carried power in his hands most people never dreamed of, but never came across as intimidating unless faced with an enemy. He was a warrior, born and raised both.

It didn't make him a good kisser any more than being able to bring people back from the dead made _her_ one. It didn't really matter in any case. It was the sincerity, the simple passion behind the way he touched her that made everything else inconsequential. He was a reserved, self-contained individual, but when it came to her he forgot about propriety and prudence and followed his instincts. She loved that she could make him come undone like this. She loved that he could let go enough to dissolve into her like this despite all his Quincy pride and social uncertainty.

Once upon a time, she'd loved Kurosaki-kun like this, but she was not someone who could carry on an unrequited love at the same intensity indefinitely. She needed touch. She needed to know that whomever she loved saw her and loved her back. She needed the exchange of heartfelt truth that came only with this kind of trust.

Uryuu was giving her that with the hesitant, hopeful touch of his lips, the stuttering progress of his hands across her back.

Orihime gave herself up to love. Whatever came next would come and she would decide what to do with it then. It was nice to realize that she wasn't alone.

xxxxx

Winter passed in a haze of apathy.

Orihime wrote her exams, ranked second in her grade. People were again surprised. She was not.

Ishida ranked first. This also failed to surprise her.

The snow melted. The trees blossomed into pale green leaf and silver-pink petals. Spring arrived in all its glory, with promises of new starts and rebirths and change. Orihime had always loved spring, but this time she was unaffected by it. It felt exactly like winter to her, monochrome and predictable and boring. The sakura were pretty. The new grass smelled wonderful. She enjoyed it, but from a detached point of view, as though through a pane of glass.

May came around, drenched with flowers and rain and hope. Orihime left her raincoat in the closet and walked to Ishida's house. By the time she got there her hair was streaming and she couldn't see through the water in her eyes.

"I want to die," she told him when he let her in. "I feel awful for saying it but it's true and you're the only one who will understand what I mean when I say it. I love this world. I love life. But I don't fit here anymore. People who know the things we know don't belong here. Please tell me you understand."

Ishida nodded, once. "I understand. I've been thinking about it a lot. From what I've learned and observed, we've somehow interrupted our samsaric cycle by visiting the worlds beyond while still tied to this one, and then even worse by coming back. Now it's like we're standing on a cliff with most of our weight already over the edge. We're being drawn to complete the cycle." He hesitated. "If I were to... cross over, would you like to come with me? I don't want to leave you here alone."

Orihime understood, suddenly, what the writers meant by 'weight of inevitability.' It seemed impossible to consider any other course. The balance cried for correction, and always would until they gave in. She threw her arms around him, pressed her face into his clavicle and shook with excitement and terror. "I've already written letters to Tatsuki and Chizuru," she whispered into his blue-pale skin. "I'm ready whenever you are."

"You're sure?" he whispered.

She could hear the fear and anticipation in his voice, echoing her own. "Yes. I've been technically dead three times already. I'm not afraid."

"All right," he said, lips tangled in her hair. "Tomorrow, then?"

xxxxx

Belladonna, or deadly nightshade, was hardly a common commodity these days. She wondered where he'd found it, and how he knew how to expertly brew it into tea as he was now doing.

Their glasses clinked cheerily together. They smiled at each other. She leaned forward and kissed him silently, thanking him for understanding and keeping her company on this journey. The world would condemn them for this, but Orihime knew better. She would protect the world from there better than she ever had from here. She was unafraid, completely at peace with her decision.

"See you on the other side," she joked, grinning easily, feeling more relaxed than she had in over half a year.

Ishida smiled back at her, clutching her hand tight within his own until her knuckles creaked. "Bottoms up," he croaked.

They put the glasses to their mouths and drank, then lay down together, curled securely in each other's arms. Belladonna was bitter, but the honey he'd tainted it with was sweet.

The visions came like the tide. They crept up unnoticed. It took several minutes for Orihime to realize that the ceiling was not actually crawling with insects, and that the air was still air and not fire. Visions or not, they felt real enough. They were harsh and frightening, but she could feel Ishida's hand white-knuckled around her own and was somehow never afraid enough to lose her mind. Her body was on aflame with fever. Her heart was racing, she couldn't breathe, her vision was blurring into hazy mirages of black horror. She was dying. They were both dying, together.

She felt the world slip away from her like a badly secured rug under her feet, sliding sideways as she fell and fell and fell and fell and it was dark and quiet and warm and--

xxxxx

Orihime woke up to a mouthful of dust and a hand crushing hers.

"There you are," said Matsumoto Rangiku, pursing her lips in exasperation. Hitsugaya Toushirou stood beside her, arms crossed. There was a crowd of ragged dusty people gathering, wondering amongst themselves what was so special about these two people that a captain and lieutenant would be sent to meet them. "We've been waiting for you two for ages."

Orihime turned and met Ishida's eyes. He smiled at her and tightened his hand around hers.

Rangiku turned and unerringly showed them the path towards their new life. They followed, wordless and childlike and smiling hard enough to break their faces.

**XxxxxxxxxX**

**A/N:** Well, there you have it. Thoughts and criticisms welcomed though not necessarily agreed with. :D

Eia


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